Extremists aid West’s plots against Islam

Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani has raised the alarm over Western efforts to project a wrong image of Islam as a religion supporting terrorism.

Larijani, who was speaking to a group of Sunni clerics on Friday, said that the US was seeking to ‘propagate’ a distorted image of Islam in the Middle East.

“Over the past few years, the US and a number of its allies in the Middle East have been seeking to propagate a fake [interpretation] of Islam and to tarnish its image by linking it with terrorist moves.”

“All Islamic sects should make every effort not to fall into US-Zionist trap,” Larijani said, adding that any division among different Islamic sects has been brought to the region by the intelligence services of foreign forces who seek to gain a foothold in the region.

Larijani’s plea for unity among Muslims comes as on Wednesday the al-Qaeda leader in Saudi Arabia urged Sunnis to confront Shias.

In an audio recording posted on the internet, Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Rashid, accused Shias and Iran of trying ‘to take over Muslim countries’ and ‘to annihilate Sunnis’.

The al-Qaeda leader said “their(Shias) threat to Islam and its people is much bigger than that from Jews and Christians.

He also accused Yemeni Shias of rising against Sunnis. “Do you not see and hear the Huthis’ aspirations in Yemen and their incursion against Sunnis?”

The Yemeni military launched a major offensive – dubbed Operation Scorched Earth – against Houthi Shias on August 11 in northern Yemen.

The government accuses the fighters, who are named after their leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi, of seeking to restore the imamate system, which was overthrown in a 1962 coup.

The Houthis argue, however, that they are defending their people’s rights against government marginalization- a policy which they believe has been adopted under pressure from Saudi-backed Wahhabi extremists.

During the past fortnight, Saudi Arabia has managed to aggravate the problem even further by launching air raids in northern Yemen, based on a claim that Houthi fighters have killed two of its soldiers.

While Riyadh insists that it is targeting Houthi positions on ‘Saudi territory’, the Shia resistance fighters say Yemeni villages are being targeted with deadly phosphorous bombs, which cause massive injuries among the Shia civilian population.